Paul & Betsy Hoppe, Ogilvie MN

Paul
and Betsy Hoppe bought some land 25 years ago.10,000 seedlings later they have a tree farm!

Their
land, 383 acres, straddles the border between Kanabec and Mille Lacs
Counties.Their mail address is Ogilvie
and the nearest larger town is Mora.

Paul
and Betsy bought the land after it had been on the market for a year.The former owner had purchased it right after
World War II.The owners before him had
failed at farming on the land because the soil is heavy clay and poorly
drained.This fellow tried to create
pasture for beef cattle but gave that up in 1952.“The land wanted to go back to trees,” Paul
said.

Paul
spent his career as a conservation officer, first in Glencoe and then in the
Mora area.He retired in 2002.“It was a wonderful job but it is also good
to be retired,” he said.

Now
Paul spends part of every day in the woods.He harvests some wood for his outdoor boiler that heats their home and
sells some stumpage.But that is just
the start.Maple syrup is an annual
string time project.This year, he and
Betsy made 28 gallons of syrup.That’s a
lot by any measure but especially when you consider the fact that all 1, 120
gallons of sap was collected from trees scattered around the property and
carried to a tank behind Paul’s four-wheeler in 5-gallon buckets.“We have a few sugar maples,” Pau said, “but
mostly we tap red maple which seems to work just fine.”

Right
after finishing with maple syrup, Paul starts work inoculating his mushroom
logs.He does Shittake and Oyster
mushrooms.“Getting a crop of mushrooms
required six months of weather in the 70s.That means here in Minnesota it takes two years,” Paul said.

Paul’s
newest projects are honey bees and a pollinator pasture in which he’s planted
60 species of wild flowers.

Off
the land, Paul does lots of volunteer work.He is chair of the Kanabec County Soil and Water Conservation District
Board, chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee for the Snake River Joint
Powers Board and participates on the Minnesota Association of Soil and Water
Conservation Districts Forestry Committee.Needless to say, Paul spends hours each week in meetings!

Back
to those 10,000 seedlings.As anyone who
has planted and tried to nurture that many seedlings knows, there are lots of
ways to fail.“Some seedlings I planted
in the understory 15 years ago aren’t much bigger today than when I planted
them,” Paul said.But, those that do
grow provide great satisfaction for Paul and Betsy and a legacy for their seven
grandchildren.